


house of gold

by WannabeMarySue



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternative Universe- Canon Divergence, Alternative Universe- Padmé Lives, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Padmé is a BAMF, single mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-03-19 05:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13697856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WannabeMarySue/pseuds/WannabeMarySue
Summary: As Padmè gets older, she learns to tell time in the way her back aches, the way her knees creak—in another universe, she doesn’t have that luxury.(or a padmè lives au)





	house of gold

_She asked me, "Son, when I grow old_  
_Will you buy me a house of gold?_  
_And when your father turns to stone_  
_Will you take care of me?"_

* * *

 

 

There was no funeral for Anakin.

No one thought he deserved it (though in her own private way, Padmé mourned the man her husband had once been--the father he would have grown to be if the dark side had not claimed his heart). There was no funeral for Padmé either. Her heart may have been shattered when Obi-Wan had looked at her, guilt and regret heavy in his eyes, but it would take more than a broken heart to put her six feet under. She had twins to raise and a rebellion to run.

 

Palpatine’s betrayal hurt; he had been a friend, a confidante the tumult of a galaxy at war, but hindsight was 20/20, as they say. She did not need Obi-Wan’s very pointed silences to know that the chancellor had never been her friend. Perhaps she had only believed in his allyship, because the thought of any more deception was too much to bear.

 

Luke and Leia grew up under Padmé’s motherly guidance, but she was young, though the gray streaking her dark hair said otherwise, and her mothering techniques consisted more of vague guerilla warfare tactics to get them to clean their rooms than anything overtly maternal. Luke and Leia, already precocious and too sneaky for their own good, did not grow up lacking parental figures in their lives. Obi-Wan, guilt-ridden and dutiful, spent every moment he wasn’t fighting with the rebels at Padmé’s apartment, playing X-Wings with Luke and bemusedly acting out the role of the enemy general in Leia’s complex toy battles.

 

Others dropped in regularly, steady figures in the twins’ developing lives--Ahsoka, usually trailing a merry band of fringe resistance fighters; other jedi, whenever they could risk emerging from hiding, would visit as well, all keen on protecting Luke and Leia. Darth Vader, who’s name, Leia noted at a young age was never spoken in their home, continued to hunt the jedi with a terrifyingly single-minded intensity. He was picking them off one by one as the Empire continued to gain ground against the rebels, taking entire planets and star systems.

 

Padmé knew, as the other resistance leaders often reminded her, that they needed to focus on taking out ships, supplies, bases, not one spectre dressed in black, no matter how ruthless he was. But she knew something the others did not. Something her and Obi-Wan could not quite bear to tell anyone out of misplaced guilt. They were fighting for the future, for their families and planets, but Padmé was also running from the past. From mistakes and lost love.

Luke and Leia were ten, and while Padmé had tried to firmly enforce that neither so much as glance at a lightsaber, even she couldn’t deny the strength of the force in her son. He radiated light, and while she was hesitant to allow her son anywhere near the doctrine that had been Anakin’s undoing, she knew that keeping him away from it would only breed disaster. Better to have him going in with eyes wide-open--she would not let the past repeat itself.

 

“Obi-Wan,” she looked at him across their kitchen table, the mug of caf clutched between her hands, already cool, “what if it happens all over again?”

 

She wasn’t sure she could handle it again; she was strong, but even a rebel general had her limits.

Obi-Wan reached out and laid his hand atop hers. He was looking thinner lately, paler, his beard longer--“We cannot stop the future, only prepare ourselves for it.”

 

She snorted. “Did you even believe half of the cryptic crap the Jedi order threw at you?”

 

It had been years now since the temple on Coruscant had been burned, the bodies of younglings and jedi masters alike charred and broken inside of it.

 

“I have to,” was Obi-Wan’s reply, “What else is there to believe?”

 

There was a shout from the living room then, Luke’s voice high and whining, demanded Leia return his toy lightsaber. Leia’s response was a loud clatter as she tossed the toy down the hall, proclaiming that Luke was a hack.

 

Obi-Wan and Padmé heaved familiar sighs and pushed back from the table to go separate their twin disasters before they escalated from name calling to hair pulling.

A week later Luke was given his father’s lightsaber. He held it reverently as Obi-Wan told the young boy the first story he had ever heard about Anakin Skywalker. The old jedi master told Luke of a young slave boy from Tatooine who had grown up to be a great jedi knight--a young boy who had only wanted to help people.

 

Luke ignited the saber, wonder in his eyes and across the galaxy, on a Star Destroyer, a Sith Lord paused, feeling a disturbance in the force. Something new; something that felt almost like hope.

With Luke captivated by Obi-Wan, Leia began to lobby in earnest to join her mother in her own political escapades. When it came to her children, Padmé was reluctant to even let them venture out of the apartment, but she knew, realistically, that they had been born into a war they couldn’t escape. Obi-Wan was right, though she would never tell him, he was already insufferable as it was with his attentive force senses--they couldn’t stop the future, whatever horrors it held, only prepare Luke and Leia for it, as best as they could.

 

At ten, Leia was already brilliant, with a mind for strategy. All she had at home was her toys to create elaborate battles and sieges with, but Padmé had caught her more than once conducting war tribunals and senate meetings with her dolls.

 

Padmé’s senate crumbled more and more each day as the Empire gained traction, but many planets still clung to democracy, and she along with Bail Organa and the other senators who remained loyal to freedom made due with what they could. And when their democracy failed, Padmé was not above deploying her rebel forces to get shit done.

 

Leia attended Padmé’s diplomatic meetings, often interrupting the grown-ups to interject her own, pointed, opinions. Padmé didn’t stop her, because Leia was bold and smart, and she wasn’t the kind of mother to crush her child’s young ambitions. She had ruled an entire planet at just fourteen, after all. But she did attempt to teach her daughter manners, and why interrupting and yelling were not always the best diplomatic tools.

 

Leia took a strong liking to Bail Organa, Alderaan’s representative, often trailing behind the senator, peppering him with questions. As an old friend of Padmé’s, he took it quite well, often scooping the young girl up when her short legs couldn’t keep up with his longer strides.

 

For a while, their lives passed in relative peace, and Padmé’s small family remained intact and happy. Luke trained with Obi-Wan, and sometimes Ahsoka when she dropped by, and begged daily to be taken on missions, which he was in turn, daily, denied.

 

Leia continued to attend meetings with her mother, and at night, while she and Luke were laying in their beds staring up at the ceiling she would whisper to him the things she wasn’t supposed to hear.

 

“Uncle Bail mentioned something about the Empire playing the long game,” she whispered to Luke. Across from her, Luke stretched his hand up above him, wiggling his fingers in the moonlight.

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“I think they’re trying to drain our resources. Y’know, let us tire ourselves out.”

 

Luke looked affronted, “The rebels will never tire out,” although he didn’t sound quite that sure, because last time Ahsoka had visited, she had fallen asleep at breakfast, her face smooshed into her plate.

“It’s smart though,” Leia said, “They have the money and the fleets to wait us out.”

 

Luke didn’t reply, and when Leia looked over at him, he was fast asleep, golden hair splayed across his pillow, glowing in the moonlight.

 

Three years passed, with rebels flying covert missions and defending planets to the best of their abilities, and when Luke and Leia turned 13, they demanded their turn on the playing field.

 

“Luke has been training hard,” Leia argued, “He would be an asset to Ahsoka and Obi-Wan on missions. And I have attended more Senate sessions than half of the actual senators. This is our fight too.”

 

Luke stood beside his sister, trying to look earnest and strong, like someone worthy of fighting his mother’s fight.

 

Padmé’s gaze strayed to Obi-Wan, who had the gall to look considering. He looked at her and shrugged.

 

“I could remind you of a young queen I once met who dressed up as her handmaiden, just so she could join the fight.”

 

Luke and Leia exchanged a hopeful look, and Padmé realized she had been fighting a losing battle for years.

 

With a sigh, Padre gave in, “Fine, but I approve everything.”

 

“Yes ma’am,” her kids chorused back at her, Leia grinning smugly. Luke just looked happy to be there.

When the twins turned 16, Leia met Darth Vader for the first time, and Padmé, even with the entire resistance at her disposal couldn’t save her. Because, when the Empire hit, it hit hard, and they were all scrambling to make sure the entire Republic didn’t fall apart, as the plans for a battle station the size of a moon fell into their hands.

 

No, the usual heroes were all caught up trying not to die themselves. It was Luke, with his twin intuition and a little help from the force, that managed to convince a blustery flyboy and his walking carpet of a copilot to fly a suicide mission right to the Death Star’s front door to save his sister. But not before Vader got to her first though, because, despite all her cool quips to Han, Luke could still see the haunted look in Leia’s eyes as they flew the Falcon home.

 

That first night back at home, Leia had slipped silently in Luke’s room, slipping into his bed in the pitch dark of the room and told Luke about the silence in her heart, the sucking hole where Alderaan had once been. She remembered warm vacations there, running through the meadows with Luke, care-free and safe. And now it was gone, like so much space dust.

 

Color Padmé surprised when, after spending two days yelling at anyone who would listen that he’s leaving “right damn now, I’m a smuggler not a hero,” she finds Han sitting firmly between the twins as the resistance heatedly debates how to destroy the Death Star.

 

Luke looks ecstatic, Leia smug. Han just looks resigned.

 

He’s handy though, Padmé has to admit, and his ship isn’t quite as garbage as it looks on the outside. Chewy’s some added muscle that Padmé finds helpful during meetings with reluctant allies. All he has to do is stand behind her and mutter nonsense in Wookie, and they fold in record time.

 

Her little ragtag family falls into a new pattern. The war rages on, but Padmé is, in a simple way, content. Dinner’s are always an event , with Luke whining, and Leia and Han arguing at the end of the table. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka are always running in and out when they can, except Obi-Wan’s going by Ben now, and Padmé realizes one day that they’re all getting old. Her knees ache now, when she stands for too long, and to be honest, she thought it would all be over by now. That someone would have won. But it just drags on, an incessant back and forth that shows no signs of ending. The Emperor’s still out there, and his dog Vader is still killing jedi—so they keep fighting. Padmé’s knees ache, but she keeps going, because one day she wants her kids’ dinner conversation to not revolve around the latest raid or new loses to their forces (their friends). Every day that seems more and more like an empty wish.

 

Four days before the twins 17th birthday, Ahsoka doesn’t come home for dinner. They find out later it was her choice, the sacrifice. Vader had moved beyond targeting jedi and had begun the systematic decimation of all force sensitive beings. He had cut her down as if the name Snips had never been something he had thrown around with the fondness of a father. As if they hadn’t once faught side by side.

 

She had died alone.

 

Padmé’s back began to ache.

The twins come to dinner less and less. Han shows up sometimes, even when Leia isn’t there, giving Padmé an apologetic shrug and complimenting her stew. At the other end of the table, Ahsoka’s empty seat feels like a sucking void.

 

Maybe it’s because Obi-Wan insists that Luke is ready or because the empty look in the old jedi’s brown eyes is something Padmé can no longer read, or maybe it’s simply because she’s tired—has been for months now.

 

But, she let’s Luke go, let’s him follow the path the force has laid out for him. Somewhere she can’t follow. Nor can Obi-Wan, or even Leia, who is still in shock that, for the first time, Luke is striking out on his own, no longer following his twin.

 

Luke goes dark for a long time, and there’s nothing else to do but keep fighting.

 

Leia’s brilliant, truly, but Padmé always knew that. Between her, Leia, and Bail, they go on the offensive. They push and they push and they push, hoping—praying—that eventually the Empire will break. That the other shoe will drop. That something will finally happen .

 

They seem close, one day; they’ve freed an entire star system from Empire control and cut off a crucial resource line. It could be the final push the rebels need, Padmé thinks, as a group of recon pilots troop into headquarters, back from a stealth mission in Empire controlled territory. A pilot walks up to Padmé. She looks hesitant, eyes downcast. So, Padmé braces herself—she finds herself doing this a lot more lately, ever since Luke left. She’s taken up writing letters she can’t send home about brave soldiers that have died, blown to space dust during an endless war. The pilot reaches Padmé and stands up straight, shoulders back. She’s young, Padmé notes. She should be off, falling in love, living her life, not looking like she leaves a bigger piece of herself behind every time she goes out to fight amongst the stars.

 

“Ma’am,” she says, because Padmé stopped being a senator long ago, and she never cared much for empty titles, though the word general had been thrown around enough, “There’s news. Vader was spotted with a boy at his side…an apprentice. He had golden hair—" Padmé can’t let the pilot finish, and she’s just cognizant enough to not shoot the messenger, so to speak, because she’s seeing red.

 

At a certain point, Padmé reasons, you have to draw a line in the sand. A ghost of a smile played across her face at that analogy. Darth Vader had been, up to this point, a distant but severe threat. She threw all her fire power at him and hoped she would never come face to face with that shiny, black helmet. Because, despite everything Obi-Wan said, despite his guilt and certainty that Anakin had died, that Darth Vader had killed him--she knew better. She had never subscribed to the jedi’s eccentric belief system, and she knew that, despite everything, Anakin was Darth Vader. The two were one and the same—mutually inclusive.

 

This was too much. Padmé knew where her line was, and Vader had crossed it with leaps and bounds. Luke was one of the few, pure things left in their ravaged galaxy, and she would die before anything happened to corrupt her son.

 

Somehow Leia knew, because she was there waiting, with Han and Chewie, the Falcon at the ready. Padmé was still seeing red and as far as plans went, her only one was find Vader and shoot him in the balls. Obi-Wan fell in step with her, and if she had been less angry and more force sensitive she might have felt the presence of Anakin’s old apprentice as well. They may have their own reasons to face Vader. Padmé knew he was the dark specter that haunted Leia’s dreams, the only crooked soul in the vast space that had once been Alderaan.

 

Han, Padmé had come to accept, would follow Leia anywhere, albeit with a large amount of grumbling and an even larger amount of loyalty.

 

Obi-Wan still mourned his apprentice, his friend, his brother. Padmé, once upon a time, had mourned him to, but no longer. She was a mother, and she had a family to protect.

 

“Get this fleet to Vader,” she ordered over her shoulder as she boarded the Millenium Falcon. The hanger, silent moments ago as they had watched Padmé march across it, fire in every step, sprang to life. Pilots jumped in their cockpits and droids calculated coordinates. It was organized chaos that Padmé ignored as she stood restlessly outside the cockpit as Han and Chewie prepared them for flight.

 

They left, a squadron of righteous fury, the Falcon leading the charge.

 

Padmé didn’t realize it until later, but as the backwater planet that Vader had set up camp on came into view, back at headquarters, a shining new day had dawned—the twins eighteenth birthday.

 

In the cockpit, Leia and Han argued, more out of habit than real aggression, worry lines thick on both of their faces. Obi-Wan hadn’t moved from where he had originally sat to meditate, but now as the planet grew bigger in the cockpit window, the jedi master’s face grew more and more troubled.

 

Padmé had one shot, she knew that. The shock alone of seeing her could give the rebels the chance they needed to take Vader down. Now, with time fading her original blind anger, Padmé could only pray that Luke wasn’t as gone as his father, but she knew first hand the corruption of the dark side. There had once been a time when the thought of Anakin turning had been laughable. The Jedi Council had been naive, self-assured in their teachings, but look where that had gotten them--spread thin across the galaxy, in hiding, or dead.

 

When they first saw Luke, standing at his father’s side, he was dressed in all black, and while the part of Padmé who knew the visual power of a striking outfit admired the imposing silhouette he cut, seeing her son blending in with the darkness felt wrong. He was supposed to be in bright colors: in white or yellow or green. Not black. Not like his father.

 

Leia let out a noise of wounded fury, and Padmé knew the same feelings of no-bad-wrong were overcoming her daughter. For a brief, hanging moment after that, everything was quiet.

 

“Sidious is here--” Obi Wan’s tremulous voice shattered the quiet, and several things seemed to happen at once.

 

Padmé and Leia aimed their blasters square at Vader’s head and fired in unison, twin looks of rage glowing in their eyes. Han and Chewie went straight for the troopers, firing with abandon, so they didn’t see Luke reach out one black gloved hand and stop the twin blaster shots in midair. But, Luke’s family did.

 

Leia let out another noise of wounded anger and flew at her brother, blaster firing. He blocked each shot with his lightsaber, but didn’t advance, loathe to hurt his sister. Padmé and Obi-Wan went at Vader, Padmé firing from behind Obi-Wan  as he went on the offensive.

 

“Why, Luke,” Leia yelled, advancing on her brother, tears in her eyes. Luke’s back was to Vader, Luke’s saber casting a glow over the sharp planes of his face.

 

“There’s still good in him,” he said, quiet.

 

“Good?” Leia shrieked, “There’s nothing good about that monster. He’s killed millions. He killed Ahsoka!”

 

“He’s our father!” Luke shot back.

 

“Obi-Wan’s been more of a father than Vader ever was,” Leia was incandescent in her fury, but she had finally stopped firing at Luke. Behind them, Padmé and Obi-Wan wove around Vader, the duo as insync as Obi-Wan and his former apprentice had once been.

 

“There’s still good in him. I can feel it.” Luke was stubborn and determined and far too good for the terrible, terrible galaxy they lived in. Leia had always known that--had always known that Luke had been the more merciful of the two of them. It was part of the reason she had always felt the need to protect him. It had always seemed like a good thing--until now.

 

“Luke, listen to me. It’s not worth it. You cannot save him.”

 

“Yes, I can.”

 

Luke spun away from her then, as if to go help Vader, but another figure had entered the fray silently while they had argued.

 

Lightning arched towards Leia, sending her convulsing to the floor, and everyone in the room turned towards Darth Sidious.

 

“PALPATINE!” Padmé roared with a mother’s fury, aiming her blaster at the wizened emperor. Another bolt of lightning shot out, sending her to her knees as well.

 

“What a perfect test for your apprentice, Vader,” Sidious said, walking further into the hanger. He turned to Luke, “It is time to cut ties with those who will hold you back. They don’t want you to succeed--look at them. Weak, soft. You don’t need them .”

 

Sometime during Sidious insulting the strongest people Luke had ever known, he kind of decided  _ fuck it _ , because yes, he believed wholeheartedly that his father was worth saving. The force had led him here, to this moment. But, Emperor Palpatine was, at the end of the day, a major dick, and no one,  _ no one  _ called Leia and Padmé weak. And to be completely honest, he had been winging his whole “save-my-father” plan from the get-go. Obi-Wan seemed to be on much the same page, because the two of them, falling into the same patterns they had used when they were still master and apprentice, flew at Sidious, but the Sith lord brought them to their knees with a bolt of lightning as well.

 

“Perhaps I was wrong about your son,” Sidious said to Vader, waving his hand towards the boy in a dismissing manner. Vader stared, for just a second, and after years of thinking everyone he had ever loved was dead, after years of just accepting Sidious’s manipulation and abuse, something inside him, the something that had once been a jedi named Anakin, cracked. He lifted his red lightsaber and turned it on Darth Sidious. The Emperor laughed, his voice brittle, as he turned his force lightning on Vader, but he just continued forward, towards a man he had once trusted, using the rage Sidious had once taught him to harness to run the sith lord through. Dimly, he heard the sizzle of ancient flesh, watched as the manic light faded from Palpatine’s eyes. And just like that, there was a shift in the force, a rebalancing, and Palpatine fell to the hanger floor, dead.

 

An alarm went off, somewhere, and Vader felt the masses of rebel ships heading towards the no-name planet they were on. He felt the rush of troopers somewhere else in the base, but the doors the hanger were all sealed--it was just him and a family he didn’t know.

 

Distantly, he realized he was dying.

 

Not so distantly, he realized he was okay with that.

 

There was chaos as the smuggler started yelling that the troopers were trying to get into the hangar, and everyone scrambled into action. He was being ignored.

 

Except then, there was a hand on his shoulder, yanking him up (when had he sunked to the hanger floor?)

 

“You’re not dead, yet,” his son said, eyes wide and desperate.

 

With a wheeze, Anakin reached up and released the catches on his helmet, pulling it off.

 

“Leave me.”

 

“No!” Luke was angry and slightly frantic, but single-minded in his intensity. He started to pull Anakin towards the Millennium Falcon. No one helped him.

 

Han and Chewie were faced away, guns aimed at the main hangar doors shouting obscenities at the troopers trying to enter, and Obi-Wan couldn’t bring himself to look at the man who had once been his apprentice. Only Padmé and Leia bore witness to Luke determinedly pulling Vader’s dying form towards the ship. The sound of stormtroopers attempting to break in grew louder, and distantly, Luke knew they didn’t have much time, but he was sick and tired of losing the people he loved.

 

He knew, rationally, that he shouldn’t love his father, not really. But Luke had never been the rational one in the family--he let his mother and sister handle that department. At the base of the Falcon’s entrance, he stopped, breathing heavy, and Anakin gazed up at his son, love and regret and a hundred other emotions pooling in his eyes.

 

And then, in a moment that seemed frozen in time, Padmé walked up and kneeled beside her dying husband, and Leia wrapped a reassuring arm around Luke’s waist, and Luke realized he was crying (which wasn’t really a surprise).

 

The twins watched as their mother reached a gentle hand out to cup Anakin’s check, as she leaned in to whisper something in his ear. She pulled back, hand still on Anakin’s cheek. He died with a smile on his face.

 

For being one of the most feared people in the galaxy, Darth Vader’s death was fairly anticlimactic, but Anakin died surrounded by his family, a privilege he thought he had lost on Mustafar all those years ago.

 

“Hate to ruin this beautiful moment, but we have got to go !” Han yelled, running around the side of the Millenium Falcon as the hanger doors rattled behind them.

 

Chewie scooped up Anakin’s body with a roar, and they boarded the Falcon, flying past the incoming rebel forces, leaving the Empire behind them, leaderless and already crumbling.  

 

 

The twins were eighteen when Anakin Skywalker finally got a funeral. Only his family attended, Padmé, Luke, and Obi-Wan silently regarding his funeral pyre. Leia was absent, understandably. She had been tortured by his hand--had watched people she loved die because of him; had born silent, desperate witness the an entire planet’s last screaming moments.

 

Han asks Luke later that night if he thinks Leia would marry him. Luke gives Han a very expressive stare, which Han mistakes as an affirmative, so Luke resigns himself to many, many more years of suffering through the dramedy that was Han and Leia’s relationship. He briefly considers invoking the jedi’s no relationships code on himself, before he remembers his parents.

 

He considers idly if the galaxy would be better off without anymore Skywalkers, and that’s when he notices that Leia and Han are conspicuously absent. He resolves to give them another long talk about safe sex, because he really feels like it can’t be overstated enough. No one wants another hotheaded Skywalker running around, wreaking havoc.

 

 

Luke is sitting at the edge of the rebel base, basking in the starlight and watching the revelers from a distance when Padmé finds him. She sinks down next to him, knees creaking with age, and gathers her son close. Leia joins them not long after, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder.

 

Padmé’s older now, battle-worn and wearier than when she had first met a young slave boy on Tatooine. Her kids are adults now, and her husband is dead, and her back hurts now when it’s about to rain, but she can’t find it in herself to feel angry or regretful. Mostly, she just feels mutedly content.

 

Back at the “Hey-the-Emperor-is-Dead-and-Space-is-Safe-for-Another-Day” party, as dubbed by Wedge, Han is drunk on Corellian whiskey and happily arguing with Chewie about their Kessel run, loudly. Padmé’s exhausted, deep in her bones, but she hugs her twins closer, happy, because she learned long ago from a bright-eyed jedi, that sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment while it’s still good.

 

(Anakin watches his family from the Force-ether, content, and somewhere behind him Mace and Qui-Gon mutter bitterly about him coming back young and beautiful).

**Author's Note:**

> comments make the world go round (you can also find me on tumblr at poeandfinndamneron)


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